Sponsored Search is a proven solution for driving targeted leads to all types of businesses. Sponsored search places the ads on search results pages that are relevant to the advertisers, allowing the advertisers to target customers who are searching for the advertising product. The present disclosure is generally directed to sponsored search. More specifically, the present disclosure is directed to systems and methods for list ranking using interaction features and placing the ranked list on a block in a webpage. These systems and methods optimize the revenue and click efficiency of the displayed sponsored search results.
In sponsored search, the ads are shown in north, east and south sections of the webpage. Conventionally, the compass points refer to the top, right and bottom sections, respectively, of a web page, with search results listed along the left or west side of the page. The ads shown in the north section of the webpage are also called north ads. Bucket metrics showed that more than 66% revenue is yielded by the ads displayed in the north section. Also, the click efficiency in the north section is one of the most important metrics to the advertisers. The click efficiency is the number of clicks divided by the number of ads shown in the section of interest. For example, if a user clicks on one of the five ads in the north section on a webpage, the click efficiency is ⅕=20%. When advertising using an online advertisement service provider such as Yahoo! Search Marketing™, the advertisers would usually bid to put their ads in the north section because of the high click efficiency.
In conventional approach of ads ranking, the click probability of all candidates are independently evaluated by a model which is powered by the historical view/click data. Ads which are directed to the same search term are candidates to be placed on the web page, sorted and ranked. All ads which match a search term are ranked according to their estimated Cost Per Mille (eCPM), which is conceptually the product of the predicted clickability and its bid. Finally, the top ranked ads are placed in the north section of the page while the rest are placed in the east and south. The ads are placed in slots starting closest to the top of the page. There may be a predetermined number of slots in the north section or other sections, such as four slots.
Nonetheless, the conventional solution fails to optimize the arrangement of ads in a section. It would be desirable to develop additional systems and methods for ranking and placing ads in the same displaying section or other regions of the webpage.